Database Users

[Q] Battery life comparison for each WM/Android combination

Hello folks,
This is my first post here so I am glad to be here. I just installed the Autoboot program for my build as specified below. I was testing the ChuckyDroidROM (which I really love for its simplicty) with both Matt's Froyo with Sense UI (which I enjoy quite a bit) and the Cyanogen Mod version with shubCRAFT 1.4 and I am finding that I am getting a much better battery life with the latter.
So basically I would like to get a reference for battery life with the tweaks here for each type of combination out there so that we can get an idea of what people are getting.
After all, I am sure that we can get longer battery life that of the EVO can we?
Thanks, Albert

as long as you put the android on sdcard, the answer is no

battery
qingcai said:
as long as you put the android on sdcard, the answer is no
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't matter so much if it runs on sd, because mainly it's running on memory of the phone and it's same as other android phones.
In ways it's even better/faster than phones nand if you have quick sd card.

Android need to access to sdcard to launch and work. Sdcard access has a power consumption ... So Power consumption is higher in Android, but when a Nand Version of Android will be released, it'll be proximately the same between Android and Wm.

agree with the other posts, but if your new here, read the posting guidelines. This section is for development only, not really a q&a section. If you click top left, HTC Leo: HD2 that will back you out to the main Leo section, from that point you can see the different sections and have a better idea where to post..welcome to XDA, this is one of the most knowledgeable forums I have come across.

I'm not convinced NAND will help battery life all that much, my battery use is dominated by cell standby when I'm not using the phone, and screen when I am. NAND won't reduce either of those.

I'm using TMOUS Energy Reference, Leo_Radio_2.12.50.02_2 and Xcelsior's with great results. Battery easily lasts an entire day.

I tested it out with the build in my signature and got about 12 hours of heavy use using 3G but tomorrow I plan to use only EDGE and hopefully get better life for sure.

There are too many variables in everyone's configuration to do a comparison of battery life(twitter, Exchange, POP, IMAP, Facebook, web usage, talk time, WM ROM, Android build etc). However, it might be useful to show what works for individuals and share ideas.
I don't buy into the "NAND saving battery" too much. It's still memory that needs to be accessed. It will be faster on NAND, but better battery life? I don't have the specs on power consumption per access but I would think an Android build that utilized hardware more efficiently would have bigger impact.
Take for instance your example.... why is your shubCRAFT using less battery than mattc?

battery won't improve very much in final versions, maybe -10% or so (+sleep)
but will never get as good as in WM, because android doesn't have very good optimized PM (even when they finish as much as it can be done). look at any android vs. WM device with comparable internals and you'll see that wm has much longer stand-up time
but hey if you take into consideration hd2's tiny batt i think htc has done some great job with hardware

I plan to downgrade my radio from 2.12 to 2.11 and I suspect will increase battery life a lot. Will post more later.
Testing the Xcelsior Sense build and loving it.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

Why does Android on the HD2 eat up so much battery

Hi Guys,
I was wondering why Android on HD2 eat up so much battery. Earlier I was thinking, that android is running of SD card...so its the case. However this is not true as in Android HD2 NAND thread its been mentioned many times...that battery won't increase significantly even after NAND install of Android, so where lies the problem...is it because power management drivers on hd2 android not good enough...just curious?
Regards

There must be a problem with your android build or you are not properly managing your battery life. To enjoy good battery life you need to disable radios via power control, and keep screen brightness low.
Current widget tells me that in standby my hd2 uses 3-7 mA. This draw is fine when compared to similar android devices.
Please provide some details on your build and your reading from current widget.

I think he was asking about how much the HD2 life in android is shorter when compared to WM6.X
If this is the case, this has much to do IMHO about how Android works in its innards.
The Android OS has a way of controlling the apps installed in it, to know which apps do which kind of stuff. Like, when a new app is installed it has a file that tells the OS all features it does, and which of those features can be called by other programs (an example is the gallery 3d, that can be used to open pictures of certain types, every time a file that it can open is accessed android asks [if you have more than one type of gallery] which app you want to use to open the picture).
With this kind of control being done by the system in real time in a way totally different from windows (register??) the OS probably need more awake time and probably use more battery.
With the same amount of time spent using similar stuff in windows mobile and android, WM really rulez in terms of Battery Life. BUT I really prefer the new life Android is giving me in HD2. I'm really happy again, feeling like I have a brand new toy again.
P.S: I'm oversimplifying the way this works, without even mentioning the services, widget services, and several other stuff that are running in the background all the time.

i get about the same battery life in winmo n androud. make sure u have a good radio n compatible rom.

mini_robot said:
i get about the same battery life in winmo n androud. make sure u have a good radio n compatible rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
People always say those things...
Well, let me just say that I'm using one of the best combos out there, and yes I have tested almost all combos you can imagine by my self in my own phone, so I wouldn't rely on someone else's idea of a perfect combo.
Tested more than 10 roms (the list is long so, I wont bother saying all of them, but the most used ones are there, Chucky, Miri's, VBNrom, Dutty's, and several others.
About radio... 2.10, 2.11, 2.12 and now 2.14 I have used all of them too and combined them with each rom...
Right now the best combo FOR MY PHONE and in my opinion is VBN 3.14 and radio 2.14
Multi boot, autoboot android 6sec.
I really think that what is most important is the build, with the same builds, almost all WM roms made for android, and Miri, have the same effect for me, the radios I must say that 2.12 and 2.14 are the best, and 2.14 has better reception in my country, for me.
So, as I have said, FOR ME, the best combo is resumed to VBN 3.14, radio 2.14 and any android build, right now using Desire HD 3.1 from Mdeejay with several different kernells (still testing them)
The kernels and the build are the MOST important thing after you find a good combo.
With the best build/combo and a good WM rom, doing similar things (surfing the net for the same amount of time, phone in sleep mode for the same amount of time,same time talking and etc. the best battery life is surely for WM 6.X hands down.
BUT if you are really getting the same Bat life, you are a lucky guy keep the settings you have, because I must say that I have constantly near me 5 HD2 (from friends), all of them with android now, and every single guy says that the bat life is nowhere near WM 6.x
I could go a full day in WM6.5.3 and have 50-40% remaining in the end of a day with heavy usage. Android, with moderate to heavy use, I'm happy if I can reach the end of the day, and even happier with some bat left
Greetings, Santroph.

I agree battery life is not comparable to WM6.x. People who claim they get the same battery life most likely have a buggered up WM6.x setup or they don't know how to manage power/settings.

Which App are you using to monitor power consumption?
Currently I use PowerTutor.
One time I wondered how 30% of power were lost over night?!
So battery lasts maximum one day until it's empty.
On WM 6.5 it lasts for about 2 days, like santroph already said, too.
A friend of me told me, his HTC Desire has about 80% in the evening. Do they have a better battery?
In usage I have about 540-600mW
He has got 550-650mW
So seems the same power consumption.
Regards
----
HD2

I actually get around the same amount of battery life as well. Just running the stock Froyostone 2.1 without tweaks (don't even know how to do tweaks if my life depended on it). Current Widget shows 0mA when waken up from screen off and hovers at 3-4mA with screen on and idle. Battery drop 1-2% per hour over night.

polo735 said:
There must be a problem with your android build or you are not properly managing your battery life. To enjoy good battery life you need to disable radios via power control, and keep screen brightness low.
Current widget tells me that in standby my hd2 uses 3-7 mA. This draw is fine when compared to similar android devices.
Please provide some details on your build and your reading from current widget.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have TMO US HD2 and I'm using NRGZ 21916 18Sep ROM with 2.14 radio. For android I'm using pongster's HyperDroidSense V1.1. I'm using only 2 widgets HTC Analog clock and Weather channel. I have set the screen brightness on automatic and to tell u its quite dull, not at all bright. I've also disabled all Background sync's and no WiFi or bluetooth is enabled...
I do like to fiddle with my phone every now and then...but its not heavy use, I would say its moderate.
Battery life i'm getting is by the end of day, the battery is drained and have to recharge.
Before this android ROM i tried warrenb213 CM6 9/6V1.5a which is claimed by some user's to give best battery life on TMO HD2. Its stock android rom with CyanogenMod...battery life was little better, but it was slow and it didn't had instant wakeup...it took 2-3 seconds after pressing the button to wake...and personally I prefer HTC Sense UI to stock...
On WinMo my phone easily last 2 days with some battery % (about 20-30) left and can easily give me third day too with light use on 3rd day. And by no means i'm using a minimalist WinMo setup...I have CHT v1.8.5 and the same analog clock with seconds hand enabled.
So battery life on Android << that on Winmo. About the argument that Android uses more battery due to how its build. I don't think its the reason, because HTC's other phone like Desire or Desire HD have the same 1230mAh battery and have similar specs...but there battery life is similar what HD2 gives on WinMo.

Also, you must bear in mind that comparing the HD2 to the desire with battery life, the desire is obviously going to win. The desire has been made by HTC to run Android, unlike the HD2. The desire does have a slightly larger battery (i think) but the desire has been optimized by HTC so that it uses the least amount of battery possible I.e when in standby etc.
I don't know all the specifics but this is what I've found out
Hope this helps
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

^^ya, i do understand...but to me its happening like battery life on hd2 w/ android is like 15 hours from 7am in morning to 10pm in night....WinMo give easily gives like 50-60hours depending on use...desire has similar as i've heard...
Agreed not optimized, but I expect it to give 40hours with full charge?

It is not optimized I guess? I get 6-7 hrs on winmo but 5-6 on android.

We can't compare with Desire, even if the hardware are really similar when looking at CPU/GPU, RAM, radio and stuff like that, we have e HUGE NORMAL LCD screen, that really takes way much more battery than Desire's Smaller Amoled screen.
Recent tests have shown that the new desire with Super LCD (thats way better than ours) do waste more energy than the AMOLED one (despite what HTC has to say about it).
I think that we should compare it with our own phones with WM, and probably with the new Desire HD or Evo 4, which have the same Case/Screen and very similar hardware too (despite Evo beeing CDMA).
IMHO...
P.S: People say that the SD card doesn't have anything to do with the battery drain, and that nand should be the same. Well I can say that this IS and IS NOT true... It all depends on which card are you using. I have 4 MicroSD cards, and they all have different behavior with the same combo/build/kernel/battery, even when in sleep mode with everything else (connections and all) disabled.
I have used WatchDog to see if any program was strangely making this happen, and I didn't find anything at all different when the Hungry SDcard was using that much battery, it was all it's fault.
2GB class 4 -> 5-7ma stable
16gb class 2 -> 3-7ma stable
8gb class 2 -> 5-9ma stable
8gb class 6 -> 5-80ma not stable (can be ina 5-7ma for hours and suddenly be in more than one hour in 40-80ma)
I prefer to use the 16gb class 2 for more battery, since the performance is not that better with the class 6 in android.
I've tested this a lot, and retested.
Greetings, Santroph.

I think that the HD2 battery is shortened by the display (Samsung Vibrant is awesomer in that respect) as well as the processor. If I throttle the processor down to 384mhz and keep the screen at 33% (automatic backlit) then I can get pretty decent battery life from 15-24 hours?

A couple of questions

First off Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it.
Ok so i am wondering a couple things. I have an HD2 with one of Mdeejay's blends on it. I use launcher pro so looks aren't really gonna change too much. currently I am having huge battery drain. I'll charge over night and cant seem to get past 80%
1. Which Rom is the best on battery power?
2. Are there any underlying things in WINMO that maybe I should turn off before starting android?
3. Are there any underlying things in my android build that I can turn off?
4. My task killer seems to always get full even when I don't start certain apps, is there anything I can do about this?
Thanks to all that help.

Droski said:
First off Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it.
Ok so i am wondering a couple things. I have an HD2 with one of Mdeejay's blends on it. I use launcher pro so looks aren't really gonna change too much. currently I am having huge battery drain. I'll charge over night and cant seem to get past 80%
1. Which Rom is the best on battery power?
2. Are there any underlying things in WINMO that maybe I should turn off before starting android?
3. Are there any underlying things in my android build that I can turn off?
4. My task killer seems to always get full even when I don't start certain apps, is there anything I can do about this?
Thanks to all that help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Some roms may cause problems, but all compatible ones shouldn't have influence on battery life. It's just hit & miss, try the one MDJ suggests. (probably mentioned in his thread)
2. There are some tweaks available yes, I personally doubt they work though. I get good standby battery life w/o even having looked at those tweaks. Just search for registry tweaks on this forum.
3. You can always turn off mobile data, sync, 3G (and obviously wifi, bluetooth, and low screen brightness). Install setCPU to underclock your processor (again, there's a lot of informative threads on this already)
4. Uninstall your task killer and never think about it again. They only do evil on Android. Having apps in your RAM memory is now actually a good thing, as opposed to windows. (yet again, a lot on this can be found through search.)
About the max of 80%: your battery isn't calibrated well. Either search for batterystats.bin on this forum and you'll find a guide on how to recalibrate, or reinstall your android build with a 100%, completely charged battery. Check the percentage in WinMo, and then leave it turned off for half an hour to make sure it's reaaally fully charged.

Completely agree with the above, with the exception of SetCPU. You're far better off with a recent kernel (I'm having great success with MDJ S6.1) setcpu is pretty much redundant now unless all you're interested in is melting your processor with ridiculous overclocks and pointless benchmark scores. ("Oh look I get three more points in quadrant than you but my phone reboots every 15 seconds")
After I performed my battery calibration I get two days moderate use out of my phone with no problems.

what if I were to charge to the full 80% then re-flash wouldn't that make it so the battery is 100%... also if i can only get 80% I would think that a flash at 80 would tell my phone it was 100 when in actuality it was 80. Maybe I'm confused about the whole battery conditioning issue.

Reno_79 said:
Completely agree with the above, with the exception of SetCPU. You're far better off with a recent kernel (I'm having great success with MDJ S6.1) setcpu is pretty much redundant now unless all you're interested in is melting your processor with ridiculous overclocks and pointless benchmark scores. ("Oh look I get three more points in quadrant than you but my phone reboots every 15 seconds")
After I performed my battery calibration I get two days moderate use out of my phone with no problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might want to read my post again, I suggested to install setCPU to underclock the CPU, to improve battery life. I don't quite see the point in overclocking either.

[Q] Battery life very bad on CM7

Hi everyone,
I have a big problem of battey usage on Android...
I flashed the NexusHD2 rom in a first time and i realised the battery life was very bad ! (I lost 3% for 5 minute of use !)
I flashed the famous Typhoon CM7 rom and it's the same...
My Radio is 2.15.50.14 and i use CLK.
Thanks for your help

Try a different kernel. That helped in ICS, so after some trial-error you should find a good one.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA

What kernel is the best for it ?

I use Hyperdroid w/ seader r9 kernel. I get pretty decent battery life with it. But you also have to remember that the HD2 is a bit older so it has a smaller battery and less power-efficient parts.

Xeroday said:
I use Hyperdroid w/ seader r9 kernel. I get pretty decent battery life with it. But you also have to remember that the HD2 is a bit older so it has a smaller battery and less power-efficient parts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, i flashed STOCK Windows Mobile 6.5 from T-Mobile and the battery lasted exactly the same time as with Android on it. I found that the ROM/Kernel combinations only matter a little. The phone alone has horrible battery capacity.

elesbb said:
Agreed, i flashed STOCK Windows Mobile 6.5 from T-Mobile and the battery lasted exactly the same time as with Android on it. I found that the ROM/Kernel combinations only matter a little. The phone alone has horrible battery capacity.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Buy a high capacity battery could help a bit ?

zabu64 said:
Buy a high capacity battery could help a bit ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A bit?! Lol that would obviously help a lot. I'm not quite sure how accurate CurrentWidget is, but in terms of standby battery drain I get 5ma drain with wifi on on my phone. On the same settings on my Mum's Desire S she gets 26ma. However she gets great battery life, which I would only guess is due to the larger battery (and the fact that she barely knows how to use the phone, so the screen isn't on very much at all).

Nigeldg said:
A bit?! Lol that would obviously help a lot. I'm not quite sure how accurate CurrentWidget is, but in terms of standby battery drain I get 5ma drain with wifi on on my phone. On the same settings on my Mum's Desire S she gets 26ma. However she gets great battery life, which I would only guess is due to the larger battery (and the fact that she barely knows how to use the phone, so the screen isn't on very much at all).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use batterymonitorwidget pro. And i get around 5ma with wifi and cellular on.

Try using an app called JuiceDefender - it works really well at extending battery life. It basically lets you tweak loads of options to do with data and syncing, so you can have it set that data doesnt run when certain apps are open, or data is off when the screen is off, etc.
There's an ultimate version available, but it is £4.99 from the play store. But I guess that'd be cheaper than a new battery?

The same problem occured to me a few weeks ago. I have been using HyperDroid-CM7 which worked quite decent for 5 or 6 months and had very good battery life. ABut a few weeks ago suddenly the battery life became to awfuly decay, wasting 20% of the energy for idle hour instead of the normal 1-2. I changed the rom to the NexusHD2 ICS port and the battery life slightly improved but rhe problem stays the same. Could it be because the battery itself is broken or some software calibrations are needed (I haben't done any for an year since I bought the device)

AOSP vs Touchwiz Battery Life

Just wanted to get some peoples opinions on battery life between the two. After owning the device for 4 days it seems that when I am on AOSP the battery life is somewhat worse but it may just be in my head so I wanted to know what you guys have found.

miketoasty said:
Just wanted to get some peoples opinions on battery life between the two. After owning the device for 4 days it seems that when I am on AOSP the battery life is somewhat worse but it may just be in my head so I wanted to know what you guys have found.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would say it will be better on a stock de-bloated rom until someone cracks hardware acceleration in AOSP. I flashed AOKP noticed the CPU loads were almost always about 1.0 higher then the stock rom and I would imagine this is because the CPU is doing all of the canvas drawing.